Northern Chinese · Main
Shanxi Dao Xiao Mian
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, acid holding everything up to the light, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 500 g plain wheat flour, about 11 percent protein
- 225 g water at 20C (68F)
- 5 g fine salt
- 600 g ripe tomatoes, scored, peeled and roughly chopped
- 4 eggs (about 220 g), beaten with 2 g salt
- 45 g neutral oil
- 15 g ginger, minced
- 4 spring onions, whites sliced and greens reserved
- 4 garlic cloves, sliced
- 10 g sugar
- 6 g salt, for the sauce
- 40 g Shanxi laochencu (aged black vinegar)
- 200 g green bok choy, cut in lengths
- 20 g chilli oil, to finish
The skills inside
Frying the paste until the oil splitsSalted water & the float testShaping by handResting dough: the pause that does the work
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rub the salt and water into the flour and knead hard for 10 minutes; this dough fights back. Stop when it is dense and smooth and barely takes a fingerprint, like modelling clay. Wrap and rest 40 minutes, then shape into a fat loaf and rest 20 minutes more. 10 min
- Pour the eggs into hot oil, let them puff and set at the edges, break them into large curds and lift them out while still glossy.
- Fry ginger, garlic and spring onion whites for 30 seconds, add the tomatoes, sugar and salt and cook down 10 minutes, until they collapse to a jam and the oil separates and runs orange at the edge. Return the egg, kill the heat and stir in the vinegar. 10 min
- Hold the loaf on your forearm over a pan at a hard rolling boil and shave with a curved blade in long flicks, so each noodle flies in as a leaf, thick along the spine and thin at the wings.
- Boil 90 seconds, until the leaves float and the spine loses its chalky centre, adding the bok choy for the last 20 seconds, then drain and fold through the sauce with a spoonful of chilli oil.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Resting dough: the pause that does the work 71 recipes
- It actually rested, covered, for the time stated, not cut short because the rest of the schedule was tight.
- It rolls and shapes without fighting: it stays where it is put, and it does not spring back or shrink on the bench between passes.
- The surface is smooth and supple rather than dry, cracked, or skinned over.
- It is at the temperature the next step needs: cold where the fat must stay solid, cool and relaxed where it must be rolled thin.
- Baked, it holds the dimensions it was shaped to rather than shrinking back from the edges of the tin or the rim of the dish.
Where it goes wrong The rest was skipped or shortened, so the gluten was still tight: the dough fought the pin and sprang back thick and uneven, then shrank down the sides of the tin in the oven.
Shaping by hand 85 recipes
- The pieces match: weighed, or judged against each other rather than by dividing the mass by eye, so that no piece is half again the size of its neighbour.
- Surfaces are smooth and unbroken with no cracks, tears, or dry patches, and the seams are sealed and sitting underneath.
- The shape is defined and it holds while the tray waits: it has not slumped, spread, or relaxed back out of its form.
- Nothing is trapped that should not be: no air pocket where filling should be, no filling breaking through the surface, and no excess flour greying the outside.
- They finish together in the heat: no piece done while another is still raw, which is the only test that the first mark was met.
Where it goes wrong The dough was worked past its point or shaped without a rest, so it fought back: the pieces spring out of shape on the tray and bake tight, uneven, and torn along the surface.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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